After talking with Jeff (metakephoto) and unless someone else has a better place… My housemates have agreed to opening our house up to a Meetup. The tentative learning theme will be “How to use your house as a studio.” Catchy eh? My thought would be not only for models but products also per popular request. Maybe even learning architectural photography. We have 5 to 10 different spots that would work for shooting, sorry one of them is not the garage. It all depends on what we want to shoot and the weather.

A quick list of spots:* Bay 1 Breakfast nook* Bay 2 Dinning room* Kitchen* Kitchen island (for product)* Kitchen table (for product)* Back Porch* Living room couch (red sectional, many possibilities)Stairs* Bathroom (tub looks out into small atrium)* Bedroom with canopy bed. * Backyard if weather is good* Front porch* Room that needs to be painted (if people want we can wait until shoot day to paint and have a little fun)

My thought would be to leave the house as is and then when every one arrives we can discuss pros and cons of each. Part of the learning process would be to discuss what works, what doesn’t and why.

Do we have anyone that has done this (converted house to a temp studio) that may be willing to lead?

Do we have anyone that is will to lead/teach about shooting product?

Do we have anyone that has architectural photography experience that may be willing to lead?

My model is a total gym rat and she has all kinds of nice gym outfits but no official sport uniforms like Juls had last month. I want to try half body shots like you see on the front page of Shape magazine with gym outfit or bikini. Also I can bring my mountain bike and bike trainer so we can set up to pose the model easily for a bike scene. The arm wrestling thing sounds crazy and fun. She was more excited about posing on the red couch with something exotic for us. Just FYI for everyone that none of the people I bring are working models but rather just friends of mine, so they need direction and your patience. I hope that is OK with everyone.

@DaveWeav- I hope you can bring your backgrounds to play with especially for the couch area shoot. I find shooting indoors just difficult because of all the background clutter. Without backdrops my indoor photos seem more like just snapshots. I'm eager to learn from this experience.

ShutterCraze: i'm gonna bring a dark red velvet background...and if anyone has fabric backgrounds with a hoop stitched on top, bring it and we can add it to my crossbar and be able to switch backgrounds easily...

helpful volleyball [deleted]
11 years ago

Hey I would love to be there...is there where I RSVP?

helpful volleyball [deleted]
11 years ago

@metakephoto I have a blue background and a black one...blue has a seam down the middle...I can bring it if you want.

@OregonVelo, I was hoping to pick your brain on cycling photos as well. I might be able to get my hands on a bike from a friend who is a builder and needs shots for his website. I've seen your photos for a long time linked through all the OBRA stuff, and I'm curious to talk about what you've found works/doesn't work...

@oregonvelo I'm still seeing about getting a frame set, so not 100% sure I'll have it. He is Mitch from MAP Cycles: www.mapbicycles.com/But I think at the very least we should try the latest suggestion from Strobist-the group shot. Could be fun.

Group Shot Ideas:-Fake Beards/Moustaches-White Robes (strobist cult shot)-Flashes in front of our faces pointing at the camera-"Oh what a feeling, Toyota" jumping shot-Aerial shot of everyone lying on the floor (in their fake/dead position), but individually lit with their own strobe (with a snoot on it)-Tallest to Shortest (with their flash on a stand behind them pointing at the camera, right above their head)-Cheerleader Pyramid (and Photoshop David Hobby standing on top)

So my thougt on ballons and milk. I have always like shots with a ton of ballons. It is a lot of work for one person to get a bunch of ballons, but if we all dropped by the Dollar Tree and pick up a few ballons we can easily have a ton of ballons. I think it is something like 10 for a $1 for the cheap ballons with helium in them.

The other idea is milk in a bath tub. I saw this discussion on a different group... May have been strobist.com... They were trying subsitutes for milk since it cost so much to fill up a tub. I thought that if we had a willing model and everyone wanted to bring a gallon we could pull it off with the real thing. We need two things. A model and whether Jeff and Luke think that my tub is good enough to pull this off.

I love this group shot ideas. Us on the ground (cameras in hand) and the models holding the swords would be great! I also like the idea of having flashes in our faces and jumping shots are always fun. Let's try a few different ones!

I'll grab some chips on my way over tomorrow.

I should get some sleep so I'm conscious tomorrow. I just got done photographing the moon with my dad's 400mm lens and 2x teleconverter. The shots were great.